Romney romps on social media post-debate

Fresh data from the social media precincts demonstrate that the Romney-Ryan ticket continues to gain greater momentumonline in the final days of this campaign season. Despite what the talking heads have been reporting about “who won” last night’s debate, the true success measure is which candidate is getting a significant bump from last night’s tussle in Florida. If President Obama looked annoyed last night as Romney challenged him on his foreign affairs leadership, it’s not likely he is going to be all that thrilled by the overnight numbers from Facebook.

Since the debate ended last night:

Mitt Romney is up over 514,000 Likes

Barack Obama is up just 224,000 Likes

Paul Ryan is up over 203,000 Likes

VP Joe Biden is up just 14,123 Likes

Perhaps the most impactful data is on the leadership that Romney now has with engaged visitors to his Facebook site. For the first time since we have been monitoring data, Mitt Romney has a higher engaged audience on Facebook than President Obama. There are more than 3,212,394 Facebook members talking about Romney – up 377,680 since last night. President Obama’s base is going in the opposite direction for the first time. The engaged audience for the President is down 135,073 since Monday night.

The data signify a huge problem for the president because there will be no other opportunities for him to present his case to as wide an audience going forward. Romney’s debate strategy coupled with his massive effort on Facebook is definitely paying huge dividends.

Romney needs to continue this assault on Facebook and all other interactive venues in the days ahead. It’s critical that he leverage online media buys in every potential website and social media venue available on a local level in all of the swing states that are being contested.

There is no doubt that there will continue to be an onslaught of television commercials run in these markets. The success of the Romney-Ryan ticket online cannot be understated. It is the one place where we can watch the direct effect of effort against return on that investment. It’s working. He needs to double down and do more in the final days of the campaign.

Conversely, it appears from the data that the president’s strategy has backfired. His engagement scores and mediocre growth in his online base are demonstrating a level of apathy that has him limping to the finish line. Republicans cannot let their foot off the gas in these final days.